What’s New About the Ice Warriors?

Mark Gatiss has promised Doctor Who fans ‘something new’ when the Ice Warriors make their long awaited return this Saturday in Cold War.

The episode, which promises to bring back the creatures who originally were conceived as a replacement for the Daleks in much the same fashion that Robert Shearman brought the Doctor’s most recognisable foes back in Dalek, is set to bring more to the table than just a slick new redesign:

”I’d always wanted to set a ‘Doctor Who’ on a submarine, one day I said [to showrunner Steven Moffat] ‘How about an Ice Warrior on a sub?’ And there’s something else about them, something new.

The ‘something new’ got us both excited and so this Saturday’s episode, ‘Cold War’, was born.”

Mark did concede however that the Doctor and Clara will have a little more space to manoeuvre than if they were on a real submarine:

”We had to ‘Hollywoodise’ the amount of room on board. it would be hard to hide a seven foot monster on a conventional submarine.”

But no Doctor Who episode moves on without first acknowledging that long, illustrious history; Mark also said the episode pays homage to former Doctor Patrick Troughton, who first fought the Ice Monsters back in 1967:

”The episode is a love letter to those Patrick Troughton stories that so often saw a group of desperate, frightened people under attack from an alien menace.”

Find out more in the interview with Mark Gatiss in the new Doctor Who Magazine, out now. Meanwhile, Cold War airs at 6pm on BBC One and BBC HD, and at 8 ET on BBC America, this Saturday (13th April).

Everyone has a favourite Doctor and mine - just for his honesty, his fairness and his ability to not notice the Master's awful, awful disguises/anagrams (Sir Gilles Estram!?!) - has to be the Fifth Doctor, Peter Davison. The stories didn’t serve him as well as his acting served those stories.